Some key facts about Mother’s Day that you may not have known by anyone, lawyers included.
For instance, the Courts heard custody hearings on Mother’s Day. Anna Jarvis always considered Mother’s Day her intellectual and legal property and wasn’t afraid to lawyer up in its defense.
She included a warning on some Mother’s Day International Association Press releases: “Any charity, institution, hospital, organization, or business using Mother’s Day names, work, emblem, or celebration for getting money, making sales or on printed forms should be held as imposters by proper authorities, and reported to this association.”
The day when mothers are celebrated is not necessarily born of the happiest or most normal of circumstances, as the National Geographic described in these seven Mother’s Day pointers. Something to appeal to every lawyer, we’re sure.
1. Mother’s Day started as an anti-war movement.
Anna Jarvis is most often credited with founding Mother’s Day in the United States.
Designated as the second Sunday in May by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, aspects of that holiday have since spread overseas, sometimes mingling with local traditions. Jarvis took great pains to acquire and defend her role as “Mother of Mother’s Day,” and to focus the day on children celebrating their mothers. (Read more about Mother’s Day’s early years.)
2. A former football coach promoted an early version of Mother’s Day—and was accused of “kidnapping” the holiday.
Frank Hering, a former football coach and faculty member at University of Notre Dame, also proposed the idea of a Mother’s Day before Anna Jarvis. In 1904 Hering urged an Indianapolis gathering of the Fraternal Order of Eagles to support “setting aside of one day in the year as a nationwide memorial to the memory of Mothers and motherhood.”
3. FDR designed a Mother’s Day stamp. Or at least he tried.
Woodrow Wilson wasn’t the only president to put his stamp on Mother’s Day. Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally designed a 1934 postage stamp to commemorate the day.
4. Mother’s Day’s founder hated those who fundraised off the holiday.
Since Mother’s Day’s early years, some groups have seized on it as a chance to raise funds for various charitable causes—including mothers in need. Anna Jarvis hated that.
5. The mother of Mother’s Day lost everything in fight to protect her holiday.
It didn’t take long for Anna Jarvis’s Mother’s Day to get commercialized, with Jarvis fighting against what it became.
6. Flowers are an original tradition that endures (sort of).
The white carnation, the favorite flower of Anna Jarvis’s mother, was the original flower of Mother’s Day.
[table id=10 /]
